April 24, 2026 ·
One time I saw a TikTok of a hairdresser saying she can tell how the economy is doing by the kinds of hair styles people opted for; and that people always had stories on top of their choices explaining their aesthetics, which in her point of view were coping mechanisms for the real changes underneath causing those choices: affordability. These observations invoke laughter, but everyone has their version of them.
One such signal I jokingly point at is freedom and sovereignty being marketed as a product or service; or at least some kind of aesthetic version of it. There's YouTube videos of people quitting their jobs and making a show out of it that increasingly start becoming visible, showing others how they can quit their jobs, too; and join them on this island where people walk around bare feet, drink raw milk, and transact in bitcoin. Course selling shows an uptick and starts showing up more often on the screens. Funding announcements. Startup accelerators. You, too, can start a company. A big underneath driver of this in the 2010s was said to be 0% interest rates, abbreviated ZIRP, or zero interest rate policy.
The interesting thing to understand about ZIRP is, it wasn't named until it had already passed. Nobody was calling it ZIRP while it was going on. It was given a name and explanation only after it was already over. So the next thing, which in my opinion is happening now, doesn't have a name yet. The details vary but a general feeling of increasingly being marketed to feels eternally recurring. There is a bear case that forms in response, meaning people start to bet against emerging trends. I hadn't heard the word grift until a few years ago, but now it's very casually used for things one doesn't approve of. Regardless, this difference in opinion helps in forming a market. And people explain their choices, both for and against, in many different ways while participating in them.
There's an uptick happening right now. Good. Great. I've found that there are lots of people who are aesthetically driven and they are starting to show up. It's a slow thing.
Nietzsche's portrait taken from here.
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